Once the stuff of science fiction, artificial intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly commonplace in our homes and in our workplaces – think asking Alexa for a recipe or yelling questions at Google Assistant on your cell phone.
Businesses are harnessing the powers of AI to automate repetitive tasks, improve customer service, and analyze customers’ web behavior, saving time and money, and keeping customers happy.
From the big social media platforms checking content using analytics to automated call handling services, which are now commonplace, AI is integrating seamlessly into our lives.
Benefits of AI
One way AI is simplifying a once lengthy and expensive process is with transcription.
Along with those industries that have historically needed to utilize this kind of service as part of their everyday processes, more and more companies are discovering how transcribing can have benefits for them too. From taking minutes in a meeting to creating searchable documents from online video content, accurate transcription is becoming ever more popular, and AI is making it accessible to the masses.
What is AI Transcription?
AI transcription is based on speech-to-text technology, relying on automatic-speech recognition (ASR) machines to take the spoken word it is “listening” to and translate it into text, removing the need for a manual note-taker.
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If the idea of a computer accurately converting speech to text is new to you, here are three industries already using it to their advantage.
Court Reporting
Removing the need for a real-life stenographer at a time when they are in increasingly short supply, AI driven voice transcription software eliminates the risk of human error. This is essential in a court setting where an accurate record of the proceedings is crucial.
Of course, this technology is constantly evolving, and the very nature of AI means the accuracy of transcription is only improving over time. However, we are already seeing accuracy scores of 80%+ when using AI transcribing software on its own and to achieve the 99% score needed in certain industries such as the legal sector, some companies are now providing a hybrid option where AI produces the transcript at speed and a human edits any inaccuracies.
Education
To increase student engagement, universities are making use of AI to transcribe lectures, seminars, focus groups, and a whole host of other academic scenarios. Not only that, but universities must also offer solutions to meet the needs of people with disabilities. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires colleges and universities to provide individuals with equal access to programs, services, and activities, which means, for example, giving a deaf student access to a transcript of a lecture so they can participate on an equal footing to their peers.
Students themselves are making use of this innovative technology when it comes to transcribing spoken-word interviews, research, and videos into documents, which they are then able to highlight, annotate, and index.
Online course and e-learning providers also use the same type of transcription and captioning services for their pre-produced or live course content. Again, this is improving accessibility for students and increasing information retention by providing material in more than one format, suiting different learning styles.
Media Production
Media production professionals understand how transcribing and captioning their work improves its SEO and makes it accessible to viewers with disabilities, or anyone in sound-prohibitive environments, such as the workplace or on public transportation.
In a world where multimedia is at the forefront of almost every business model, services able to increase web traffic from search engines and make content accessible to a wider audience are in high demand.
AI transcription ticks both of these boxes, so it is little wonder that this is becoming an essential step in the creation of video and audio content. Even more so when you consider most industries now feature some level of content production within their social media marketing strategy, so it’s no longer only experts in video creation who will find this technology useful.
The list continues
While this demonstrates how these three industries are embracing this tech, they are not alone. For example, receiving timely transcriptions of meeting minutes, research notes, and interviews can enhance communication and speed up project deadlines for innumerable businesses and organizations.
So, while people have begun to get used to speech recognition technology in their homes, it looks like it will be a tool that businesses will be increasingly turning to also.
